Chatango Terms of Use

This Privacy Policy outlines the types of personal information we gather when you use the Chatango service, as well as some of the steps we take to safeguard it. Chatango is privately owned and operated by Chatango LLC (referred to herein as "we" or "us".)

The following principles apply to the personally identifying information we ask for and that you provide. "Personally identifying information" is information that individually identifies you, such as your email address.

Data collection
To register for Chatango, you are asked to provide your email address. You are also asked to choose a personal screen name and password. You may also provide optional information, such as your gender, country, zip code, age and photo.

Cookies
When you use Chatango, a cookie and a Macromedia Flash Shared Object are stored to your computer. A "cookie" is a small file containing a string of characters that is sent to your computer when you visit a website. Macromedia Flash Shared Object is a small file written by Macromedia Flash Player to locally store your information, such as your login name. We use cookies and Flash Shared Objects to improve the quality of our service. They do not contain any private or personal information. Most browsers are initially set up to accept cookies. You can reset your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. Similarly, you can change the settings of your Macromedia Flash player to reject Shared Objects.

IP addresses
We do store IP addresses of all incoming connections to Chatango servers. This information is stored for the security purposes such as preventing abuse or intrusion. Additionally, when a user sends a message to a Chatango Group, the IP address of the sender is recorded and displayed to the group owner and the group moderators, so that the group owner and moderators may ban the sender from the group. IP addresses contain no personal or confidential information.

Information sharing

We do not sell your personally identifying information to other companies or individuals. We may share such information in the following limited circumstances:
1. We have your consent.
2. We provide such information to trusted businesses or persons for the sole purpose of processing personally identifying information on our behalf. When this is done, it is subject to agreements that oblige those parties to process such information only on our instructions and in compliance with this Privacy Policy and appropriate confidentiality and security measures.
3. We conclude that we are required by law or have a good faith belief that access, preservation or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of Chatango, its users or the public.
We may share aggregated information with others. Examples of this may include the number of users who paste the Chatango MINI box on Xanga blogs.
If you choose to provide your Age, Gender, location and photographs, we may share this information with other Chatango users as a part of Chatango service.

Third Party Advertising
We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.

Information security

We take appropriate security measures to protect against unauthorized access to or unauthorized alteration, disclosure or destruction of data. We do not store your passwords, we only store their HMAC hash.
We restrict access to your personally identifying information to employees who need to know that information in order to operate, develop or improve our services.

Use of the Chatango messenger

We do not monitor communications made by users using the Chatango messenger.
We may securely store your communications for archiving purposes. This stored communications will only be accessible to the parties who participated in communications.
We also do not control the use of the Chatango messenger or the parties with whom you may choose to communicate. You should not share your personal information with any third party.

Changes to this Policy Please note this Privacy Policy may change from time to time. Any new version or updates will be posted on this page. If you have any additional questions, please contact us.

April 6, 2009